The Hard Facts About Fluoride
If you were to walk into a dentist’s office, you might find a great divide between people who are against the use of fluoride treatments and those who wish to have them.
But many of the arguments against fluoride are rooted in a fear of how it was first discovered and later introduced into the United States’ water supply. Coupled with the fact that fluoride is most beneficial during a child’s early and adolescent developmental stages, the question of whether or not it is good for you and your kids comes up quite often.
Fluoride conspiracy
A quick internet search will unveil many conspiracy theories around fluoride and how it worked its way into our water supply in the U.S. From lowering IQs and causing brain damage to the government’s way of mind-controlling the masses, there are a lot of theories to sift through. But at the core of every one of them, you’ll find a real fear that fluoride could be poisonous. It’s true you can have too much fluoride, but in most cases, it causes unwanted cosmetic issues that we’ll address here in a moment. But according to the American Dental Association, for someone to experience true fluoride toxicity with serious or life-threatening illness, it would take drinking 5 liters of water for every kilogram of body weight. For an adult at 155 pounds, that means you’d have to drink roughly 120 gallons of water at once.
The History of Fluoride
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the history of fluoridated public water got its start all the way back in 1901 when a Colorado dentist started noticing an unusual brown stain, or mottled enamel, on the teeth of several of his patients. Those same teeth, though stained, were somehow less vulnerable to cavities and decay. The suspected root cause of their condition was some unknown substance in the local water supply.
By 1942, dentists had identified the cause of mottled enamel as fluorosis, or an over-exposure to high amounts of fluoride during developmental years as children. But because of its cavity-resistant qualities, fluoride seemed like it could be a beneficial ingredient in water supplies as long as it could be controlled at low concentrations so it wouldn’t lead to fluorosis.